Goldman banker Weinberg Jr dies, aged 87

The Weinberg name has been synonymous with the Wall Street bank for almost a century

By

Maryam Omidi

Updated: October 7, 2010 2:09 p.m. GMT

Sidney J. Weinberg Jr, a senior director of Goldman Sachs, died aged 87 at his home in Massachusetts on Monday. His family's links to the Wall Street giant have existed since his father, Weinberg Sr, first joined as a janitor’s assistant to clean spittoons and brush hats in 1907.

His father's rags-to-riches tale and meteoric rise through the ranks of Goldman Sachs to chief executive in 1939 until his death in 1969 has been well documented. So too has the life of his younger brother John L. Weinberg, who came to be known as the conscience of Wall Street. John joined Goldman in 1976 as partner until 1990. He died in 2006.

Succeeding them at Goldman Sachs is John's son, John S. Weinberg, who works as co-head of investment banking at Goldman. He is currently a vice-chairman at the bank. Peter Weinberg, his brother, is a founding partner at boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg.

Along with his father and brother, Weinberg Jr had a paternalistic attitude towards the bank and was staunchly opposed to taking Goldman Sachs public. In her book, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success, Lisa Endlich wrote that at a meeting on the bank's fate, Jimmy, as Weinberg Jr was known, spoke out with an authority that "far outstripped his position" http://bit.ly/ajcxQR.

Weinberg Jr frankly told the group of senior employees gathered that the proposal made no sense. The bank had a heritage to preserve and a responsibility to the next generation. No vote was taken that day.

Yet despite his traditional views, Weinberg Jr was not a social conservative. In 2006, he joined a band of financiers who called themselves Republicans Who Care http://bit.ly/aVKeYP. The group of moderate Republicans, among them the likes David Rockefeller, a former chief executive officer at Chase Manhattan, believed in limited government, including on issues such as abortion, balanced budgets, free trade and a strong national defence. The group's website notes that members are just as likely to read The Wall Street Journal as they are the New York Times.

In The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles Ellis, Weinberg Jr is described as one of the firm's most successful imports. "An original and sometimes contrarian thinker, he was consistently unpretentious, congenial, and insightful," wrote Ellis. "He was his younger brother's closest and most objective confidant and adviser on policy and strategy. In a crowd of intense, controlled egos, he was cheerfully modest, pragmatic, and gracefully at ease within himself."

Ellis added that Weinberg Jr had a knack for spotting talent and frequently identified employees for promotion. His utter lack of pretension is exemplified by one occasion at a chi-chi restaurant in Los Angeles when he said to the waiter: "Don't you have anything less expensive?"

Before joining his father at Goldman Sachs in 1965 as a general partner, Weinberg Jr worked as vice-president of the textile division at Owens Corning, a building-products maker that went bankrupt a decade ago. He then moved to Goldman Sachs after much persuasion from John Whitehead, the bank's co-head at the time. Weinberg Jr headed the firm's investment banking services department between 1978 and 1988 until he was made a limited partner. In 1999, he was promoted to senior director.

Weinberg Jr was also well-known in philanthropy circles. In 1971, he set up a foundation that has since donated around $50m to support health, science and education including at his alma maters, Princeton University and Harvard Business School http://nyti.ms/a0A6OP.

Before his death, Weinberg held a number of non-executive positions: chair emeritus of the board of trustees at Keck Graduate Institute, where he holds an honorary doctorate in applied life sciences; trustee emeritus of Scripps College; a senior trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; a life trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital; and a life trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

He is succeeded by his wife Elizabeth, daughters Sydney Houghton and Elizabeth Smith; a son Peter; two stepsons, James and Alan McCord; a stepdaughter, Laura Grauer; 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, The New York Times reported.